Not for long, Marlowe thought.
All the boats from the Queen’s Venture and the Bloody Revenge were still there, tied to the dock, right where Press had left them.
“We can’t leave any boats for Yancy to use if he tries to attack,” Marlowe said. “Billy, divide your men up. Take the longboat, there, and that gig. I’ll get my men in the others. We’ll all make right for your brig, since she ain’t rafted up with the other ships. I don’t think there’s much of a prize crew on board, anchor watch at best. Take her, loosen off sail. Load the guns. I reckon we can feel our way out of here in the dark.”
“Right,” Billy Bird said, then hesitated. “Actually, damn the hellish brig, I say. Marlowe, do you mean to just sail off? Leave your own ship behind?”
“I do. Whatever are you thinking?”
“Well, there is a damned lot of booty in that beastly ship of Press’s. In yours as well. Surely we can’t leave it for Yancy?”
“You are suggesting…?”
“At the very least we should take that bloody Queen’s Venture. Just sail it right out of here. That fothered sail has held this long, it will hold a while longer. All our men go up her side, take her, and we take your ship as well, and then we sail them both out of here.”
“And leave your ship?”
“Damned leaking bucket, with my share of that booty I could buy ten like her.”
“Please, Marlowe,” Bickerstaff spoke up, “tell me you are not actually considering this.”
“Well, there might be some sense in it…”
“You are overreaching, I fear. Let it go, get out with your life.”
“We cannot let Yancy have that treasure,” Billy Bird argued. “Lord knows what wickedness he would get up to with such wealth! And we can’t just sink the ship-the water is too shallow, and these natives can dive like fish. No, we must take her with us.”
“We have three swords, two rapiers, four pistols, and a stiletto between the fifty of us,” Bickerstaff reminded him.
“Oh. Right…” Marlowe was clutching a weapon and for that reason had forgotten that he was almost entirely unique in that.
“We’ll take the Bloody Revenge first,” Billy Bird suggested. “Should be no great task, as you said, easily done with what we have. Free my people, increase our numbers. Plenty of weapons aboard. From there we fall on the big ships.”
In the darkness Marlowe could barely see Bickerstaff, though he was no more than five feet away, but he could feel his friend’s sharp eyes on him. Bickerstaff sighed. It was close enough to concession for Marlowe.
“A good plan, Billy. Let us go.”
They spread the men out among the boats, Marlowe, Bickerstaff, Billy Bird, and Honeyman together in the big longboat by virtue of the fact that they had between them four of the five swords. The fifth was given to Hesiod, and two of Billy Bird’s trusted men were handed the two pistols. They represented the Forlorn Hope, the first into the breech, and the rest were instructed to come up behind and grab what they could-fallen weapons, belaying pins, handspikes-and join in the fray.
Across the harbor like giant water bugs, the oars squeaking in the tholes, no time for such niceties as muffling them. Fifty feet from the Bloody Revenge, and the not overly watchful anchor watch finally caught sight of them.
“Hoa! The boats, ahoy! Who’s there?”
“Captain Press!” Marlowe shouted through cupped hands.
“What? Captain Press is aboard?”
“Captain Press!” Marlowe called again, ambiguous and unhelpful.
Silence. The oarsmen leaned into the oars. Thirty feet off. Marlowe could almost hear the confusion in the anchor watch’s head. Then, “Stand off, there! Stand off, I say!”
Twenty feet, and the anchor watch began to shout, not at the boats but at his shipmates, “Turn out! Turn out!” Bare feet ran across the deck, a muffled voice shouting down a hatch, “Turn out! To arms! To arms!”
The longboat thumped alongside, and Marlowe raced up the boarding steps, accidentally kicking Billy Bird as Billy scrambled up close behind. They burst through the gangway and ducked right and left, and the anchor watch fired a blunderbuss into empty space, illuminating the deck and himself, and then one of Billy Bird’s men armed with a pistol shot him down.
Sleepy and surprised men raced up through the scuttle, one at a time through the narrow passage, and Honeyman and Burgess and Hesiod were there to greet them. Not with cold steel but with belaying pins that made no more than a dull thump as the three men laid out the unwary crew, one by one.
More men came charging from under the quarterdeck, and Marlowe and Bickerstaff and Bird met them, blade against blade, but the half-dressed men, startled from deep sleep, were no match for the desperate and ready boarders. A minute of fighting, and they threw away their swords and called for quarter.
More and more men came pouring over the side from the boats below, and they herded the prisoners forward and dragged those wounded or unconscious out of the way.
“That was well done,” Billy Bird said, leaning on his rapier.
Marlowe nodded. “We best move quick. They’ll be alerted, aboard the Queen’s Venture. But with luck those bastards at the big house are still asleep. They won’t have heard the gunshots in any event.”
Then from aft, from the dark under the quarterdeck, came a sputtering and hissing. The two men turned. The powder train burning in the touchhole of a cannon, there was no mistaking it. In the dim light that the sparks threw off they could see the figure of the man who had lit it, scurrying away.
Billy took one step toward the gun, and then it went off, a great blast of red and orange flame shooting out its mouth, lighting up the water and the boats. The gun flung itself inboard against its breeches. The blast echoed around the harbor.
The noise subsided until it was no more than a ringing in their ears.
“They bloody well heard that,” Billy Bird said.
Chapter 26
JOSIAH BROWNLAW had just fallen into a fitful sleep, the weight of his responsibility pressing on him, when he heard the small-arms fire, the shouting men and running feet.
He jerked into a sitting position, whirled out of bed, and grabbed up his sword and pistol. The shots had been fired not aboard the Queen’s Venture, he realized, but aboard one of the others, the Bloody Revenge or the Speedwell. It did not matter. All the vessels there were his responsibility.
He crouched under the low beams of his tiny cabin, took the two steps to the door, and raced out under the quarterdeck, nearly colliding with the man sent aft to fetch him. Brownlaw shoved him aside, ran into the waist, then up the steps to the gangway.
One of the hands on anchor watch was there, the man that Brown-law had charged with keeping an eye on the lashings on the fothered sail. They had to be monitored closely. If one of the ropes parted or even came loose, they would have to know it and fix it, immediately. If the fothered sail came off, the water would quickly overtake the pumps.
But the man was not looking at the lashings now. Rather, he was staring out over the water at the Bloody Revenge, and his face looked
worried and uncertain.
“What has happened?” Brownlaw demanded.
“Small-arms fire, Mr. Brownlaw, from the brig…”
They stood and listened. They could hear the clash of steel on steel, running feet. Brownlaw addressed the man beside him. “Turn out the men, pistols and cutlasses. The men from the other ship, too.” The Queen’s Venture was still tied tight to the captured ship, the Elizabeth Galley.
The anchor watch ran off, and Brownlaw stared across the water and chewed on his fingernails. What is
